They went back to their lounging, which hadn’t been quite what he’d meant. That was what the sergeant had meant by “take things very literally.” Well, he could work against them, or work with them. . . .
He sat down, and hauled out Van Klomp’s parting gift. A hip flask full of HAR’s best yet attempt at a single malt. It was a reasonable exchange for the gift of an Aston Martin replica. “Does anyone here want a drink?”
One rat—smaller, therefore a female, at a guess—with a rakish tilt to her tail and a particularly rich chocolate color to her fur, was quickest. She snatched the hip flask and leapt to a niche in the wall while the others were still gaping. “‘Tis mine!” she squealed triumphantly.
“‘Tis not right, Ariel. That’s not what the whoreson said!” protested another of the rats.
Fitz saw that a mighty fight was brewing. So he neatly snagged the hip flask back. It came with a clutching rat. “All of us.” He stared at the rat who was still clinging to the hip flask, but whose teeth were now bared viciously. “And I will personally bite the tail right off any rat who tries to hog it all. Which would be a shame as yours is one of the sexiest I’ve ever seen.”
To the sound of ratty chuckles and a couple of very credible wolf whistles, she let go. And winked salaciously at him. Then she sniffed. “You’ve got chocolate,” she said, suddenly fiercely intent.
“Indeed. And we’ll discuss my parting with some in a few minutes.”
A pompous-looking rat strutted forward, a cup made out of a bangstick cartridge outstretched. He motioned at the hip flask. “For a suitable insult, I, as Minister for Interior Affairs, will tell you her weaknesses. Although, as Minister for Defense and Lord High Archbishop, I will say Ariel’s tail is not without risks.”
Ariel, remaining perfectly confidently standing on Fitz’s knee, her eye fixed on his breast pocket, said, “Shut up, Pooh-Bah.”
He’d placed the names now. Ariel—the sprite in Shakespeare’s Tempest. Pooh-Bah from The Mikado. The names were an affectation he’d heard about. A side effect of the language download into their Korozhet-built soft-cyber units. As the soft-cyber unit selected the nearest approximate meaning to what the user meant, the name would probably reflect the nature of the beast. “Let’s start with names.”
“Bardolph.” “Gobbo.” “Pitti-Sing.” “Trinculo.” “Caliban.” “Poo-Bah-for a reasonable fee.” “Hymen.” That one arched her tail provocatively at him.
“Paws off, bawd. I found him first,” said Ariel.
No heroes. No kings. Rogues and lechers, in their own self-image, by the sounds of it. Well, he’d have to work with the clay he had.
“Get some mugs.” He gestured with the hip flask. There was a scamper and a scattering. Except for Ariel. She merely unscrewed the silver cup off his flask, and grinned rattily at him. “Methinks I’ll stay put, ’til I have that chocolate.”
He shrugged. “I’ll drink out of the flask.”
“I should have thought of offering to do that,” she said, as he doled out liquor.
“You snooze, you lose,” he said cheerfully. “Now, to business. I’ve decided to pay a bounty on Maggot chelicerae. For every left chelicerae you have for me after the next assault, I’ll pay one HAR cent—multiplied by the number of live troops I have under my command. At the moment I have some two hundred rats and sixty men, four NCOs and myself. Work that out in booze or bars of chocolate.”
The rats began frantically counting on paws and toes and tails. After a while Ariel said. “‘Tis no use. Help us with the mathematics. Our base eleven doth make calculation much labor.”
“How many Maggots can you kill in one assault?”
The rats blinked at him. “As many as is needful. As many as doth threaten us. Sometimes there are too many,” said Ariel. “Then we run away.”
“Call it ten each. At that rate—if everyone survives, you rats will get $26.50 each. Of course it gets less if anyone dies.”
“Methinks I have found more looting in a lieutenant’s pocket,” said Trinculo.
“Ah.” Fitz was unsurprised by the admission. “But then he’s dead, and there is no more. And that’s one lieutenant among two hundred. Your chances are not good. This way . . . you’re onto a sure thing. Of course I’ll have to put a ceiling on it, or I’ll go broke. Say $50 a month. That’s what the army gives conscripted privates.”